Overview

The Redmi 3S was introduced to cater the lower price segment where the 3S Prime couldn’t be extended to. While the Redmi 3S Prime features a few bits of hardware that made it tad more premium, the 3S is more of a basic version of the former. As mentioned, only a couple of features set both the phones apart from each other otherwise both the devices are absolutely identical. The Prime difference exists only in the RAM, sensor, and price department.

Xiaomi Redmi 3S Design

The Redmi 3S was launched in the market along with its Prime version. Both the phones look ideltical and also share the same numbers in the dimension department. Atlas dropping the plastic bodywork, the Redmi 3S gets a complete metal treatment that makes it look premium and way above its class. It features an industrial design but it is a well executed attempt. So, metal unibody construction it is with a 5inch HD IPS display fitted on the front. The pixel density of this display stands at a healthy 294ppi and the screen-to-body ratio is of 71.1%.

The 3S is available in Gold and Silver colour options.

Xiaomi Redmi 3S Hardware

The hardware of the Redmi 3S is absolutely identical to that of the Prime. The camera on the front is a 5 MP unit with aperture of f/2.2 and at the rear is a 13 MP unit featuring f/2.0 Aperture, 5P Lens Elements, and Phase Detection AutoFocus. The main camera is assisted by a single LED flash. Speaking of the performance hardware, the 3S is packed with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 SoC. This 64-bit processor is an Octa-core CPU that employs Cortex-A53 chip clocked at 1.4 GHz. It is mated to Adreno 505 GPU and 2GB of RAM. Just like the down sized RAM the 3S also gets a lower internal memory that is rated at 16GB but can be expanded upto 128GB using compatible MicroSD card. The 3S Prime misses out on a Fingerprint Scanner but the rest of the sensor set remains the same – Ambient Light Sensor, Proximity Sensor, eCompass, Accelerometer, and Gyroscope.

It is good that the company has made no changes to the battery of the 3S and hence it is loaded with a gigantic battery with 4100 mAh capacity.

Xiaomi Redmi 3S Software

The Redmi 3S comes with Android v6.0.1 Marshmallow out of the box with MIUI v7.0 fitted on top.